Schlagwort-Archive: Project Orion

Since Monstermaschine started at 23th of April in 2012, it is continuously inspiring leaders, billionaires and visionary of all countries in the world. Monstermaschine is THE think tank of postmodern humanistic ideas. It is spreading out valid ideas against the antihumanistic machine – we have unfortunately established more or less accidentally since the beginning of the digital age. Therefor some of the thinking, you will read in this blog, is quite important for the life of your successors, even if you might not understand, why, at this moment in time. I will try to present some of the most important ideas. Your great-grandchildren will surely understand.

First of all: Rock is an Ocean

You can conduct huge thermodynamic processes on planetary bodies of the solar system (and far beyond), which do not have any mentionable atmosphere and no liquid water at all by using the bedrock as capacity. Similar to the atmosphere and oceans on Earth, that buffer the heat of all thermodynamic processes of power plants and in the end radiates it into space, the bedrock on other planetary bodies can be used.

An anytime buildable explosive fusion power plant, that sets free heat in spherical underground caverns is probably the best candidate to do so. Very well proven technology for this kind of fusion power source exists since 1952. The plant wanders with the time in a big circle, deep below the surface of the celestial body. Like a chain of spheres, one cavern after the other is blown by nuclear explosives. One day, after at least several hundred years, cavern zero is cooled down to environment temperature again and can be reused. The chain of caverns is closing then and the circular process of explosions starts again. This power plant might become – because of it’s simplicity – the most important machine in the next hundred millenia of human history.

The building of huge power plants on other celestial bodies than our Earth was not possible up to now, because of thermodynamic reasons. Each bigger power generator in the gigawatt output range would have meant to carry millions of tons of dump metal sheet radiators with it, only to keep the machine in it’s necessary thermodynamic circular process. With the Nomad Fusion Reactor, that uses bedrock as an ocean, we have now unlimited access to huge amounts of electric power on any celestial body in the solar system and the whole galaxy.

– A preleminary business plan for building simple fusion energy plants and space ships

If You are interested in pure fusion detonations for civilian energy provision purposes You may be right on my blog. I like to write about technology, that has generally the power to be bad in the wrong hands and to be good in the right hands. I write about ethics and theology, philosophy and new Stellar Ecology a generalization of planetary ecology that gives mankind a very simple but also very beautiful sense in the universe. I write about interstellar travel and the preconditions for that. Mostly I write in German – just because it is much easier to me. In this article I will write about the organizational problems and the main development risks of a pure fusion energy development program.

In the near future, only in a few decades, space travel could look like this: huge flying platforms that are propelled by pure fusion detonations start from earth’s surface and fly nonstop to mars and land there after a few weeks in it’s desert near a building site. A ticket to mars will be affordable for most people. The platforms are made of concrete and construction steel and of 30,000 metric tons mass. The technology is rather primitive but complicated. The more mass the better for the vessels. The power of the fusion detonations is huge. The fuels are liquid deuterium for the fusion pulse units with liquid methane, oxygen and tritium for the pure fusion primary igniters. Pure fusion detonators are possible, there’s a chance that they already secretely exist in the arsenals. The energy of fusion propulsion is 10,000 times more than that of chemical propulsion. This and its side effects makes the tickets up to 50,000 times cheaper. Trips to earth orbit will cost $1000, to the moon and back $5000, to mars and back $20,000, value in currency of 2012. I know that this sounds unbelievable, but I will convince You with physical and engineering arguments in the following text.

A Science Fiction Story of Today

Along with the sun thermonuclear detonators are the only way to produce relevant amounts of fusion energy. All other methods ever tested – if they provide fusion energy at all – consume much more energy for igniting the fusion reaction than they release. So, if mankind plans to use fusion energy for civilian purposes within the next decades, it has eventually to accept, that there is only one foreseeable, realistic and practical way: using smaller hydrogen detonators in power plants, within huge underground vessels, where fusion explosions heat up a medium – similar to the explosions in a motorcar [1]. There is one big problem: all of todays hydrogen fusion detonators are ignited by plutonium-239 fission bombs, the so called primaries. These fission bombs produce highly radioactive, lethal fission products like iodine-131, strontium-90, caesium-137 [2]. It is exactly the same problem as with our fission reactors. The fission products contaminate humans, animals and plants and cause radiation sickness and cancer. This is why I have started to write about thermonuclear fusion energy plants on the moon or nuclear pulse space ships with home bases on the lunar surface. You can read about it here [3][4] if You are interested in that topic. With this kind of machines, based far away from earth’s biosphere, it would be possible for mankind to use fusion energy by todays means without any potential side effect for earths environment and human society. But can a fusion detonator only be ignited by a fission bomb? Is there another non-nuclear way of ignition? Is it possible to build a 100% clean detonator, the pure fusion bomb?

This is a proposal of a construction platform based on Orion technology. It shall be based on the moon, where it is serviced and maintenanced, and shall be used primary at building sites in lunar orbit. It’s technology traces back to the Orion project. Orion was a space ship that was developed theoretically and with smaller prototypes in the 50th and 60th. It had a nuclear pulse engine. This means it provided huge energy and therefore – first – a high specific impulse, and – second – as well a very high thrust. The Orion nuclear engine is the only known propulsion principle, that can offer both at the same time. This is because of the immense nuclear power of atomic bombs. [If you are interested in that topic also have a look on my newer and much more detailed article Flying Platforms with Nuclear Pulse Propulsion]

[This is the older and original version of the thermonuclear fusion steam machine. The article describes in detail, how I got the idea, and why I was sure, that it could work. But there was still a thermodynamic trap in the approach, and after some years the plant would have suffered the heat death. I did a change in the geometry and size to avoid this problem. Please refer to the newest version: „The Nomad Fusion Reactor“]

Scientists all over the world, experts for Nuclear Physics and Plasma Physics, are working today on Billion Dollars expensive experimental devices [1][2][3][3a] to make Fusion Energy available to mankind. They are developing their giant plants for about 40 years [3] now, but they are not much further (in producing energy) than hobbyists that are building small electrodynamic fusion energy devices in their cellars for a few thousand dollars [4]. Both, the big and the small devices, turn out a nuclear fusion reaction, and both have the same problem: they don’t produce energy. Of course there is energy from the fusion reaction, but in both cases it is much less than the fusion reactor consumes itself. So the scientific reports periodically released are very depressive to read. There is also an illustrious scientific work, a dissertation, that circulates for 17 years, which calculates, that both kinds – the big and the small – of continuous fusion reactors will never work, both because of the same reasons [5].

Fusion Energy is available for about 60 years now since the first thermonuclear bomb was ignited on Nov 1, 1952. But where are the power plants? And which size will they have? Notice the little man standing in front of ITER. Where’s the steam turbine and the electric power generator in the drawing of DEMO? Fig: [5a]